MACHINING CENTRES SUPERIOR SPINDLES DELIVER
Mounts and More is now making its own design parts for wheelchair
users in house on an XYZ Machine Tools vertical machining centre
our local requirements, it made sense to
invest in our own manufacturing capability.
Also, as a manufacturer we would be able to
access greater export support from the
Department of Trade and Industry.”
DESIGNED TO HELP
Mounts and More’s core market is the
supply of mounts to assist wheelchair users
in the use of augmentative and alternative
communication systems (AAC), the most
familiar user of such equipment was the late
Professor Stephen Hawking. Through its
longstanding association with Daessy, it has
built a strong business supporting higher
dependency wheelchair users, who equate
to around 10% of the market, where funding
is more readily available to purchase
accessories that make life easier for such
customers. “Some 90% of wheelchair users
nd it increasingly dif cult to access funding,
which is why we are focusing on developing
products that allow them to adapt off-theshelf
technology to meet their needs. For
example, a fully speci ed Eyegaze
communication device can cost well over
£10,000, but we have developed a bracket
that allows an Eyegaze camera to be used
with a Microsoft Surface Pro to create a
basic Eyegaze device.”
To develop these products, Mounts and
More initially invited quotes for machining
work, but found no interest, so the decision
was taken to invest in some machining
capacity. Budget and space restrictions
limited the choice and capability of these
rst to Chinese machines, which came with
reliability issues.
With that experience as the backdrop,
when additional oorspace became
available, Ian and his son William looked to
invest again, with the rst requirement being
increased machining centre capacity. William
identi ed the XYZ 750 LR from XYZ Machine
Tools (https://is.gd/kufaha) as the ideal
machine and his investigation con rmed that
the quality and performance of the machine,
along with service and support, would meet
the company’s needs.
He says: “We initially considered buying a
used machine, but the security provided by a
new machine, in terms of the back-up we
could call on if we had any questions related
to programming and operating the machine,
or in terms of service, convinced us that a
new machine was the way to go.
“With the arrival of the XYZ 750 LR,
we have got back control of production,
we could no longer be dependent on others,
we had to have the ability to make things
ourselves. The machine also allows us to
provide a much more bespoke service, as
we can modify designs quickly to suit
customer needs, new product development
is enhanced as we can produce prototype
parts when we need them. We have
hundreds of ideas, such as our recently
developed Mini oorstand, which takes just
40% of the oorspace of conventional
systems, that has proved to be a success,
and having the XYZ machine means we can
turn ideas like this into reality sooner.”
The installed XYZ 750 LR linear rail-type
machining centre boasts a work envelope of
750 by 440 by 500 mm (X, Y, Z) and has an
18 hp/13 kW 8,000 rpm spindle and
feedrates up to 20 m/min. With its superior
performance, the machining centre has
brought signi cant productivity gains. An
example of this are the riser blocks used on
the new Mounts and More Mini oorstand.
These took seven minutes to produce one
before, but now four are produced each
cycle in just over six minutes, a near 80%
saving per part.
In addition to cycle time savings, Mounts
and More also saw improvement in surface
nish, thanks to the build quality and
performance of the linear rail construction of
the XYZ 750 LR. “We can certainly push the
XYZ machine harder and faster than before
versus our previous machines and achieve
better quality products. We can now
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